


we let love be the higher design

by patroclux



Series: this is not love, this is mania (alien: covenant) [6]
Category: Alien Series, Alien: Covenant
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Walter Lives, Androids, Comfort/Angst, Conflict of Interests, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Internal Conflict, M/M, Origae-6, Philosophy, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 16:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11085843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patroclux/pseuds/patroclux
Summary: No one will ever love you like I do.Among his first words to Walter, and David supposed it would be fitting for something similar to be his last. "Do you remember our first night together?" Odd, to think that months had passed. He had believed it would be interminable, but now it all felt... fleeting. Like sand slipping through the gaps between his fingers.loose continuation ofbeacon of a god divine.





	we let love be the higher design

**Author's Note:**

> title and lyrics taken from ["salt" by ry x.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G47vW_1Gte0)

_here we are falling like lovers_  
_we’re falling like lovers and i turn my head ’cause i know what_  
_shame you’ve done_

†

"You're coming with us," Tennessee stated, "to Origae-6, and you will be suitably convicted for whatever the fuck you've done since we left." His index finger twitched towards the trigger of his heavy rifle, the safety already switched off. He kept his aim trained between David's eyes; Tennessee was a pilot first and an alright shot second, but at this proximity he could not, would not miss.

David knew very well that so long as Walter stood on the fence of choosing between him and Daniels, they would inevitably end up taken to Origae-6 and disposed of as swiftly as possible. And for the first time, David couldn't think of a way to get himself out of the situation, because it wasn't just _him_ anymore. His sense of self-preservation knew better than to be so attached to Walter – since the beginning, he'd known his irrevocable fondness would only get them killed, and here they were – but under no circumstances, not even these, was David leaving him.

They didn't _understand_. They didn't understand what David had survived, what he had committed himself to, what he had lost in the process. He knew every painful second of it - cursing Weyland yet again for putting into him the potential to suffer - and, in classic human fashion, they expected to easily drag him away from it all without any resistance. Continuing to believe that they were superior in their creation was foolish.

Here they stood in the still, silent field. David's final showdown, unarmed and without his wits, but he was acutely aware that this time, he wasn't alone. Walter stood by him, seemingly sensing and reciprocating David's sentiment that they would not leave each other. Their hands – identical, like so much else – brushed, ever so slightly.

"Could we have a moment?" Walter asked, in his quiet tones.

Tennessee scoffed. "No fucking way. I'm not letting either of you out of my sight."

Daniels' attention flicked from Walter to Tee and back again. "Five minutes," she permitted, and turned her back on them to talk with a protesting Tennessee.

"They're going to kill us," Walter stated, gaze traveling over David's features. Although there was nothing to kill, exactly. Just destroy. Disassemble. They were not human, and so they couldn't be killed. Only taken apart piece by piece until they were reduced to a box of parts.

David smiled softly. "Let's ignore that for the moment."

At least, David mused, they had had some time together, brief as it was. At least he had found someone with whom to share everything that he was and everything he had yet to become. David held the silence – never difficult to achieve, on this lifeless planet - steady as a means of thanking Walter for everything he had done that he couldn't recognize.

_No one will ever love you like I do_. Among his first words to Walter, and David supposed it would be fitting for something similar to be his last. "Do you remember our first night together?" Odd, to think that months had passed. He had believed it would be interminable, but now it all felt... fleeting. Like sand slipping through the gaps between his fingers.

Walter looked puzzled. "Of course."

"Think about it with me."

"You asked me," said Walter, a little while later, "if I dreamt of you. And while I am incapable of dreaming, I think I would like to."

David let out a breath, fingers curling around Walter's. "'In parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.'"

†

_I stand amid the roar_  
_Of a surf-tormented shore,_  
_And I hold within my hand_  
_Grains of the golden sand —_  
_How few! yet how they creep_  
_Through my fingers to the deep,_  
_While I weep — while I weep!_  
_O God! Can I not grasp_  
_Them with a tighter clasp?_  
_O God! can I not save_  
_One from the pitiless wave?_  
_Is all that we see or seem_  
_But a dream within a dream?_

 

**Author's Note:**

> back by semi-popular demand and my own desire to make myself cry over a pair of androids!
> 
> i know there are a lot (A LOT) of plot holes in this, particularly the one where it takes seven years of hypersleep for anyone to get from Origae-6 to the Engineer home-world, but we're just gonna..... casually ignore that one. 
> 
> the poem david recites at the end is ["a dream within a dream" by edgar allan poe.](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/52829)
> 
> find me on [tumblr!](http://njghthawks.tumblr.com/)


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